Amy Schumer Has No Regrets About Her ‘Leather Special’ On Netflix (Except One)

Walking onto the Bellco Theatre stage to applause from 5,000 of her fans in the Denver area, Amy Schumer explains why this, her first stand-up comedy special for Netflix, is The Leather Special.

“I feel like every comedian needs a leather special. Every comic has some special where they wear all leather and they regret it later. This is my f*cking moment!” Schumer exclaims, before quickly adding: “Already regret it!”

Like other leather-wearing stand-ups before her – Eddie Murphy and Andrew “Dice” Clay – Schumer certainly has reached the height of her comedic powers.

And in honor of International Women’s Day, much of her success has derived from her own hard work. Creating, writing and starring in the Peabody-winning Comedy Central series, Inside Amy Schumer. Writing and starring in the box-office hit, Trainwreck. And now directing herself in The Leather Special, which arrives a year and a half after Chris Rock had directed her in an HBO comedy special at the Apollo.

Yes. Schumer remains very self-aware. As she jokes: “I don’t know if you know but this year I’ve gotten very rich, famous and humble.”

She’ll humble herself, thank you very much, whether it’s mocking her own leather ensemble as a trash bag more suited for a walk of shame, or chugging directly from a bottle of wine onstage and declaring she’ll black out before the night is over, or her relative lack of feminine hygiene, or how she feels when she catches a glimpse of herself on the giant monitors beside the stage beaming her image to the cheap seats. One word she wouldn’t use to describe herself, though: “Brave.”

And yet that’s how many mainstream and not-so-mainstream media described her topless Instagram shots, which Schumer talked about online at the time and in greater length here onstage.

There’s still a perplexing double standard when it comes to how Hollywood, the media and society in general treat women compared to men. Schumer related one such instance from her Trainwreck promotional tour, in which the interviewers asked her co-star Bill Hader about his favorite beers, while they asked Schumer to describe what it’s like to have sex with her. Not cool there. But she’ll certainly go there and more here in her comedy act.

In fact, The Leather Special is an aggressively sexual hour. No beating around the bush, so to speak, but rather, in your face.

Post-Trainwreck, Schumer has been happily dating a steady boyfriend, whom has stuck with her through not only critical backlash but also the gross horrors of food poisoning and alcohol-fueled blackouts.

“I know I am trash from Long Island,” she jokes.

Which, with a nod to her bad lower-back tattoo that inspired a best-selling memoir, the world always reminds her of whenever things seem to be going swimmingly for her. She cites comparing the clips for her TV show alongside other winners of Peabody Awards, or more dramatically, when two women were shot dead during a screening of her movie. This leads to a more serious message from Schumer, as her jokes more pointedly mock the gun advocates who still want to protect the right for the mentally ill, suspected terrorists, or even blind people to own guns.

Did that bum you out? If so Schumer has a message for you, too: “What’s crazy is that you can catch a hot load all over your titties and still not want your loved ones to get shot in a theater.”

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Becoming famous means dealing with Hollywood’s weirder and grosser traditions, such as fat-shaming and paparazzi stalking. On the former, Schumer maintains she still feels sexy even after revenge-eating post-Trainwreck; on the latter, she’ll gleefully post the paparazzi shots of her and her sister along with her own commentary about what’s really happening.

Schumer used to be coy, cute, slower in her delivery, which earned her comparisons in her younger stand-up days as a Wendy Liebman meets Sarah Silverman type. But Schumer has shed that skin to find her own voice. A voice that’s more forward, more aggressive and delightfully unapologetic about wanting to own her body, own her sexuality, own her life and career.